Poor scores shock city students

60 students apply for photocopies of their answer sheets under the Right To Information Act to find out what went wrong.

mumbaiUpdated: May 26, 2012 01:32 IST

Bhavya Dore

Hindustan Times

Two years ago Akshay Lakhia scored 94% in his Class 10 board exam but on Friday when the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) results were announced, Lakhia only scored 62%.

“I don’t know what happened, I don’t know where I went wrong,” said Lakhia, 18, a Sathaye College science student. “I even crosschecked answers for some papers with my tuition teacher and was expecting a good score.”

Dismay was the governing mood on Friday with many students performing below expectation. “My papers went well, my prelims went well, I don’t know what happened,” said Sharan Multani, 17, an NM College commerce student who scored 79%, much lower than what he said he expected. He had scored 93% in Class 10. Both Multani and Lakhia are planning to apply to access photocopies of their answer sheets under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

This is the first time that students can get copies of their answer sheets since a Supreme Court ruling last August. Already 60 students have applied for photocopies.

The board will send students photocopies of their answer sheets if they apply to see them for Rs 400 per answer sheet.

“Most probably I will be applying for this because I want to see what exactly went wrong,” said Suraj Raut, 18, a Mithibai College student, who scored 57%.

The pass percentage for the city fell marginally, from 69.52% (fresh candidates and repeaters) last year to 68.66% this year; and more significantly from 74.61% in 2009. The pass percentage for science fell from 84.28% to 83.29%, for commerce from 64.73% 63.04% and for arts from 62.6% to 62.35%. Students scoring a distinction (75% and above) in Mumbai rose slightly from 20,985 last year (7.04% of the total) to 22,961 (7.43% of the total).

“A lot of the students preparing for competitive exams don’t pay much attention to HSC and take it casually,” said Marie Fernandes, principal of St Andrew’s College in Bandra.

This is also the last year that students who are national and state level sportsmen will be awarded 25 marks in the Class 12 exam.

It was unclear what the highest scores were at colleges because they are yet to get data from the board. It will come next week. Some students were surprised by how high their marks were. “I wasn’t focusing on HSC as I was aiming for the engineering entrance exams,” said Manav Avlani, 18, who scored 93%.